abilouise

At least that's what googieblog and I figured last night around 1am. We needed a word that meant "older sensitive/sketchy Jewish guy, the kind that likes to listen to 19-year-old girls in progressive contexts talk about their problems and is problematic". By combining the word "mensch" with the word "sketch" we get "skench". Also in usage: Skentschlekhkeyt: the properties that make one skentchlich.

And no, I don't mean any of you.

In other news, Oscar and Lucinda! What a damn good movie. How come I only just found out?

I hate my google ad copy. The text that I came up with after much deliberation, while it doesn't make me throw up, leaves me cold. Here it is:

Abi Harper, LMT
Specializing in Muscular Therapy &
Prenatal Massage in Cambridge, MA

Can you make it better? Prizes may be awarded for useability/greatness.

The sweater I frogged seems to be acrylic/wool blend.  It sort of melts and then quickly puts itself out in a way that's hard to explain any other way.  I am dispirited that it is not more fabulous than I thought it was, but it will make several very soft scarves for christmas.

I ripped out the 148 rows I had already done on my mom's birthday scarf because I decided that even if she would wear such an ugly thing, I couldn't let her.  She just needed something more gorgeous. 
I still have yet to try to set my new yarn on fire, because I am lazy, but also because it looks so pretty and I don't really want to know if it's acrylic.  Besides, I am pretty sure that it is a blend.  It has some definite wool-properties (taking forever to dry after washing, and also it has a wool-ish feel and is very slightly hairy in a way that I think would be difficult for acrylic.  It is also not a recognizable Lion Brand Yarn color, nor does it in any way resemble Wool-Ease.  It kind of feels like my Brown Sheep Brand Lamb's Pride stuff.  I will move forward believing that this is what it is, which would make me happy.
My nose ring is gone!  Well, actually, it's sitting on the desk.  The awesome estherruth came by and went with me to the hardware store to select an implement, boiled some wire cutters and set up a sterile field on my dining room table (A Joke!  My male housemate asked me "what's a sterile field?"  I answered "you with no testicles!") and I took care of general anaesthesia (actually, Jim Beam took care of it for me) and it was No Big Deal, though it was Slightly Upsetting when the wire cutters were up against my face and a sterile-gloved-finger was up my nose.  But then we drank and ate cookies and it was All Better.
Others who deserve shout-outs today include cos, for making his phone calls like he said he would and getting people to come to 78 Cameron Ave to make Deval Patrick phone calls next week, and elements for agreeing to watch TV with me in the future.  And calabashmusic.com for making me happy.

is having free time enough to stay up rilly late and do something really inefficient with one's time. This is the appeal of knitting for me (I could buy the $!#*ing scarf or sweater for way less at how much an hour of my time doing repetitive hand motion costs on the open market these days) but it is also the appeal of what I did tonight, which is to go through my giant boot-box full of stationery and greeting cards and match envelopes with cards until 3 A.M.

Most of you probably don't have boot-boxes full of stationery and greeting cards. Or maybe you do, in which case I feel better. I have the dangerous and post-apocalyptic-seeming tendency to not want to waste anything, and my grandparents all were incredible (in some cases truly truly pathological) pack-rats. Going through the literally piled-to-the-ceiling garage of my LI grandparents' condo's garage (which was hilarious. You open the door from the apartment and there's this wall of Stuff. It was like a George Booth cartoon only sad.) I found greeting cards with like, impressionist prints from B'nai B'rith and any other non-profit that anyone had ever given money to, stationery taken from European hotels they had stayed at in the 60s, and a few sheets of very pale pink engraved stuff that was my mom's when she still lived at home, and a few extremely 60s glittery christmas cards (yes they were Jews). The other grandparents' house (in a swanky Chicago suburb) was filled with more funky or animal-themed stuff. Birthday cards with marabou trim, ASPCA and World Wildlife Federation cards with endangered animals on them, American Indian artist cards picked up in South Dakota. They all smell a bit musty, but I love them, and I love how I feel compelled to hand-write letters and cards to people instead of emailing them. Also in the box are thank you notes left over from our wedding and this anthropomorphized anglo mouse set of cards and envelopes, which is the exact sort of thing I seriously dug when I was about 6-8 years old, and a pack of christmas cards that my best friend gave me as a christmas present when we were 11 and a set of super-nice paper that Gabe bought me in the Czech Republic that's all womon-y. There's some other stuff in there too, obviously, including a now-extremely precious Someday Cafe promotional postcard. I have this dream that someday I will use up all this paper (not the Someday card) and then go out and buy stuff that I completely love and that has exactly the right number of envelopes to cards and where I won't feel like I need to apologize for the dorkiness/mustiness of the card that I am sending to some awesome friend. I imagine this day as one where it feels like a great weight has been lifted and everything is clean and new and exciting and my awesome taste is revealed to all who know and love me. I now suspect that day will feel slightly empty.

This story has 2 morals for those of you still reading:
1. Abi is hopelessly sentimental about inanimate objects, especially ones that give her clues about her somewhat mysterious family.
2. If you need envelopes in any size, I am totally your girl. Lemme know and I will hook you up.

I am feeling very accomplished!  I have now written up self-evaluations for all 4 of the births I have attended!  And it was about time, too, because I had seriously started to forget the details of a couple of them...  Note to self: notes taken during labor facilitate write-up later, also doing the write-up less than 8 months later might help too.  I feel like I am a blank slate now, ready to take on more doula clients!

This is the first thing that has made me feel old: my digestive system is getting crotchety in ways I will not go into here.  But the recipe that evens my keel is as follows:

1/4 lb ginger root, chopped up into little tiny pieces
1 cup water
1 cup sugar

Combine and bring to a boil.  Simmer on low heat for 15 minutes until syrupy.  Strain out the chunks, keep the syrup in a jar in the fridge.  Pour a shot into a glass of water and drink for digestive excellence.

I feel so jet-setty with this meme. Though when I think about it I realize that a lot of these cities kinda suck.

Several things I have only figured out embarrassingly recently:

- In order to get to know other people well, spend time with them.  Make sure this time includes space to talk.

- Nobody knows what you like or what you spend your time thinking about unless it is directly observable or you tell them.

- Nobody knows what I need better than I do.

- If I don't tell someone that their behavior bugs me, they will never learn this fact.

- Things that I want to happen generally need to be done by me.

- I enjoy most activities once I am doing them, but I do not get anticipatory joy from hardly anything.  This includes things commonly considered fun as well as things commonly considered drudgery.

- A good way for other people to know about my human limitations, problems, weaknesses, etc is to actually admit to them.

- If people will pay $70 for an hour of my work and then do it a second time, I must not be bad at what I do and maybe I can relax about that juuuuuust a little bit.

- The amount of time in a day is finite.

- Doing things the same way every time you do them makes life easier because you don't have to think as hard and you can fine-tune the process of doing it until it is EXACTLY PERFECT.

I am embarrassed to say these things, except that they keep hitting me like great flashes of white light and enlightenment and then only about a minute AFTERWARDS to I realize how obvious they are.

In preparation for the reduced storage capacity of our house and as part of a we've been married long enough that the fact that we twice as much crap as we need, we are getting rid of a lot of stuff. Several of which my inner do-gooder says would probably be useful to some local humanitarian-type charity. Does anyone know of a group that needs any of these things:

-2 Sleeping bags (not ratty)
-A fuckload of band-aids
-Many sheets and towels, not new, mismatched